Chapter 11: The Memo

I stared at the message with my eyes still half shut.

Then I sat up, and the quilt of ducks slid off my shoulder, and Tuomas opened one eye.

"What?" he said.

"Read this."

I handed him the phone.

He read it, and his face went through several expressions in order.

"Companion," he said.

"Yes."

"Is that a title?"

"It's a hostage situation," I said.

He laughed into the pillow, and then he stopped, because I wasn't laughing.

"Sanna, who is this?"

"The chief of surgery," I said.

"The one with the pumpkin."

"The one with the pumpkin," I said, "and he has sent it to eleven hundred people."

Tuomas sat up with the sheet around his waist.

His hair stood straight up on one side and he looked exactly as he had when he was thirty.

"Do you want me to talk to him?"

"No," I said.

"I'm good at talking."

"You're good at looking at people until they confess," I said. "It's different. And it's mine."

He studied my face for a moment.

Then he nodded, slowly, and reached for his jeans.

"I'll go out the back," he said. "Before the neighbors."

"The neighbors know."

"Then I'll go out the back with dignity."

He kissed me once at the kitchen door, hard and fast, tasting of sleep.

His truck was gone before I'd found my shoes.

The staff briefing at the emergency room started at eight sharp.

Twenty-two people crowded into the break room, nurses and techs and two residents sharing a banana.

I walked in at seven fifty-nine and the room went quiet.

Everyone had their phones in their hands.

The charge nurse stood by the coffee urn with her glasses on her chest.

She looked at me and raised both eyebrows a fraction.

I took my place at the whiteboard and wrote the day's census.

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